Law Commons^™

Layered Fiduciaries In The Information Age, Zhaoyi Li

Indiana Law Journal

Technology companies such as Facebook have long been criticized for abusing customers’ personal information and monetizing user data in a manner contrary to customer expectations. Some commentators suggest fiduciary law could be used to restrict how these companies use their customers’ data.1 Under this framework, a new member of the fiduciary family called the “information fiduciary” was born. The concept of an information fiduciary is that a company providing network services to “collect, analyze, use, sell, and distribute personal information” owes customers and end-users a fiduciary duty to use the collected data to promote their interests, thereby assuming fiduciary liability …

Regulating Charitable Crowdfunding, Lloyd H. Mayer

Indiana Law Journal

Charitable crowdfunding is a global and rapidly growing new method for raising money to benefit charities and individuals in need. While mass fundraising has existed for hundreds of years, crowdfunding is distinguishable from those earlier efforts because of its low cost, speed of implementation, and broad reach. Reflecting these advantages, it now accounts annually for billions of dollars raised from tens of millions of donors through hundreds of internet platforms, including Charidy, Facebook, GoFundMe, and GlobalGiving. Although most charitable crowdfunding campaigns raise only modest amounts, on occasion a campaign attracts tens of millions of dollars in donations. However, charitable crowdfunding …

Platforms: The First Amendment Misfits, Jane R. Bambauer, James Rollins, Vincent Yesue

Indiana Law Journal

This Essay explains why previous First Amendment precedents that allowed government to require a private entity to host the speech of others have limited applicability to online platforms like Twitter and Facebook. Moreover, the backdrop of an open internet makes platforms sufficiently vulnerable to competition and responsive to “listener” preferences that the dominance of some firms like Facebook and Google is not really a chokepoint: aggressive changes to content curation will lead to user dissatisfaction and defection, whether those changes are made by the government or the companies themselves. As a result, there are no close analogies in First Amendment …

The Oslo Accords: A Modern-Day Story Of Occupation Told Through Violations Of The Right To Freedom Of Privacy, Catherine Demetrovich

Indiana Law Journal

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict began in the early 1900s when the disputed land, what is now the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, fell under British rule. After the Six- Day War in 1967, Israel took control of the West Bank, Golan Heights, and the Gaza Strip. Since then, tensions between Israel and Palestine have continued to grow. This Note explores a modern-day occupation question: Israel’s control over Palestine’s information and communication technology (ICT) sector. Along with privacy and human rights violations, Israel’s control is in direct violation of the Oslo Accords— guaranteeing Palestinians limited self-governance in Gaza and the West …

Sharenting And The (Potential) Right To Be Forgotten, Keltie Haley

Indiana Law Journal

Part I of this Note serves as an evaluation of parental use of social media and

further seeks to draw attention to the social and developmental impact parental

oversharing can have on children. Part II examines the tension between parents’

constitutional rights to direct the upbringing of their children, as well as their First

Amendment interest in online expression, and their children’s interest in personal

data security and privacy. Part III provides an overview of the European Union’s

right to be forgotten framework in the sharenting context and considers the

plausibility of implementing such a framework in the United States. …

Bitcoin: Order Without Law In The Digital Age, John O. Mcginnis, Kyle Roche

Indiana Law Journal

Modern law makes currency a creature of the state and ultimately the value of its currency depends on the public’s trust in that state. While some nations are more capable than others at instilling public trust in the stability of their monetary institutions, it is nonetheless impossible for any legal system to make the pre-commitments necessary to completely isolate the governance of its money supply from political pressure. This proposition is true not only today, where nearly all government institutions manage their money supply in the form of central banking, but also true of past private banking regimes circulating their …

Removing Disfavored Faces From Facebook: The Freedom Of Speech Implications Of Banning Sex Offenders From Social Media, John Hitz

Indiana Law Journal

This Note scrutinizes the constitutionality of statutes that ban sex offenders who are no longer under any form of probation, parole, or supervised release from using social media. This Note argues that the incarnations of three of the social media ban statutes that have been examined by the federal judiciary were properly found unconstitutional because they violate the free speech rights of the sex offenders that they ban from social media. This Note goes on to argue that states can secure the interests they were seeking to protect in adopting these statutes through other means.

ng what groups of individuals …

How Jon Stewart And Lady Gaga Made Congress Less Lame: The Impact Of Social Media On The Passage Of Bills Through The "Lame Duck" Session Of The 111th Congress And Beyond, Onika K. Williams

Indiana Law Journal

The lame duck 111th Congress saw tremendous action in a relatively short period of time, and it was also witness to a phenomenon of social media. Users on websites such as Facebook and Twitter employed social media to send messages to their representatives and to actively participate in the lame duck session. Jon Stewart used television to advocate for Congress’s passing of the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, and Lady Gaga employed Twitter to support the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010. Both bills subsequently passed Congress. The social media phenomenon did not end with the …